The Reason He Hides
by sweet little nightmare
Summary: "Mark hides in his work." But why? Why the denial? Why the detatchment? Mark Cohen reflects on the events of six years ago, his summer of love and loss. Mark/OC, Mark/Roger friendship. My first RENTfic, hope you like it!
1. Chapter 1

**Disclaimer: I don't own**_** RENT.**_** I'm not making any money out of this, so please don't sue me! :)**

**A/N: So I was thinking about the part in 'Goodbye, Love' when Roger accuses Mark of detaching from being alive, and this story just popped into my head. It's about the reasons Mark has for keeping his guard up all the time. Hope you all enjoy it!**

Prologue

Shoot Without a Script

_Close on that guy, over there, the one with the stripy scarf. I know him! Well, I used to. In fact, we haven't spoken in years. We studied film together at NYU, God, how many years ago now? Five? Six? I didn't finish my third year. Anyway, back to the camera-wielding scarf guy. Mark Cohen. He's hardly changed at all. I can't help wondering what he's gotten up to these past few years. What's he doing now?_

_Does he ever think of me?_

_It's Christmas Eve; everybody has somewhere to be. So I'd better get going. Not that I have offers queuing up left right and centre for me to go out tonight, but I'll think of something. Hey, maybe inspiration will hit me on the subway._

-o0o0o0o0o0o0o0o0o0o-

The young woman observes him with a filmmaker's typical open scrutiny, squinting her eyes automatically as though peering through a lens. Her chestnut coloured hair is shorter than it was back then, and there are fine lines bracketing her grey eyes. She wears a dark purple duffel coat and an olive green beret, and she sits alone at the little round table by the far window. Mark Cohen does not notice his watcher until she stands up to leave. Just as she's pushing open the door of the Life Cafe, he catches the coppery flash of her hair, the slightly dejected slope of her shoulders, and he's reminded of someone he used to know.

He remembers, all of a sudden, Roger's words to him earlier that year, before he left for Santa Fe. _Mark hides in his work._ What am I hiding from, exactly? He'd thought dismissively. He knows exactly what he's hiding from. So does Roger, better than anyone, though neither of them ever says anything about it. About her.

When he gets back to their dingy, sparsely furnished apartment that evening, Mark upends a box of old tapes on the dusty floor, scrabbling about among them for the one he needs. It doesn't take him that long to find it. He slides it into the machine and waits with mounting trepidation for the memories to scroll up before him on his slightly battered projector screen.

Her voice, crackling a little from the poor quality of the film, but still unmistakably hers, fills the empty apartment.

"Hi, Mark!" she calls out as the screen flickers into life. She's laughing, waving at the Mark Cohen of the past, the Mark Cohen standing opposite her in Central Park, brandishing his new filming equipment. "This is his first film, ok?" she narrates into the camera, "so be nice. No yelling or throwing things at the screen or anything."

In the fading light of evening, the Mark Cohen of the present stays stock still, his eyes fixed upon the girl on the projector screen. The girl he and Roger never talk about. The reason he always detaches from being alive.

Now he forgets to do that, forgets to create that distance between what he sees and what he feels. For once, he watches without guarding himself. He watches – and remembers.


	2. Chapter 2

**Disclaimer: (*sings*) "You're not gonna sue! You're not gonna sue! 'Cause I don't own **_**RENT!"**_

**A/N: So, it's time for me to actually get into the swing of this story. I admit I've actually been taking quite a bit of time in the planning of this one, but finally I'm really getting started! I hope you all enjoy the first chapter!**

Chapter One

September (_Six Years Earlier)_

Today, Monday the 15th of September, was the day of Mark's first lecture at New York University, and, surprisingly, it was the first day since his arrival in New York that he had not spent shivering inwardly with nervousness and the sort of dull, rolling unease that often comes from experiencing a sudden change. He'd been nervous finding his way around the city; he'd been nervous meeting his roomies, Roger Davis and Tom Collins; he'd been _extremely _nervous stepping out to experience New York City's wildly colourful nightlife (well, at least until partway through the night, when he'd found himself more drunk than he'd ever been in his entire life). Yet this morning he felt... ok. He supposed it was because he wasn't facing the unexpected. He was sitting down to a talk about 'Film and Soundtrack: The Use of Music in Film', a subject he was both familiar and comfortable with. It was rather like visiting an old friend.

The lecture theatre was abuzz with noise and chatter. Mark, wending his way through the throng of students and finding a seat more or less equidistant from the front and the back of the enormous room, thought that he'd never seen such a diverse collection of people. Unsurprising, really, given his small-town upbringing. His gaze swung from the two raucous young men sporting brightly coloured Mohicans, who were still standing near the door chatting idly to one another, to the young woman three rows down from him whose long, batik print skirt and many jangling bangles put him in mind of gypsies. When the lecturer, a diminutive man in a brown sweater, took his place before the microphone, Mark had to force himself to stop looking around and pay attention.

The lecturer, who introduced himself as Rob Morecambe, spent twenty minutes or so outlining the aims of the course and welcoming his students, then he proceeded to play two short film clips – both depicting the lovers' death scene from _Romeo and Juliet – _one with background music and one without.

"So," he pressed pause, and the video ejected with a soft click, "two very different renderings of the same scene. Anyone want to tell me which one they prefer, and why?"

Tentatively, Mark half-raised his hand.

"Yes, you, gentleman with the spiky hair," Rob Morecambe pointed at Mark, "go ahead."

Mark cleared his throat self-consciously. "Well," he began in a voice that even to his own ears sounded thin and reedy, lacking in confidence, "I preferred the first one, the one with the music in the background, because, you know, it heightens your emotions and makes you feel more involved in what's going on."

"Ok," the lecturer nodded his slightly greying head, "That's fine. That's good. Does anyone want to offer up a different opinion?"

A handful of people put up their hands. "How about... you," Rob picked out a girl sitting in one of the front rows. Mark could only see the back of her head; she had shiny auburn hair that fell just to her shoulders, and she was wearing a dark blue velvet jacket, "give us your views."

"I liked the second piece better," the girl's voice was clear and measured, confident yet unassuming, "it doesn't try to manipulate your emotions with melancholy music. It lets you make up your own mind about what's going on, so it feels much more raw and real."

Rob Morecambe nodded thoughtfully. "Interesting. Very interesting. Now, let's move on..."

The rest of the lecture passed quickly. Mark listened, took copious but untidy notes, and managed to go the whole hour without checking his watch to see how long was left. When Morecambe dismissed them all, he hung back in an attempt to avoid the rush for the door.

On his way out, someone intercepted him. A girl in a blue velvet jacket.

"Hey," she greeted him warmly, "you're the guy who liked the first film, aren't you?" Now he was face to face with her, Mark saw that her face was pale, round and youthful, with eyes of a shade of grey so light as to be almost silvery. The corners of her lips quirked up in a very slight smile.

"Uh huh," he nodded, oh-so intelligently, "I'm... um... I'm Mark. Mark Cohen. I major in film."

"I surmised as much," the girl laughed, "let me see... you don't seem the director type, so you want to be a... I don't know... a producer?"

Mark shrugged. "I'm not sure yet. Yeah, maybe producing. I'd kind of like to direct, actually, but I don't know... You?"

"Screenwriting," she told him, "_original _screenwriting, not adaptations. Oh, and nice to meet you, Mark Cohen. I'm Idina Laurens."

Inexplicably, Mark felt his face heating up, "Idina," he repeated, "nice to meet you too, Idina. I'll probably see you again some time." _Obviously, _he berated himself, cringing, _every freaking Monday. Why am I so stupid?_

But Idina only smiled. "Probably," she agreed, "probably."

**--**

In fact, Mark did not have to wait until the following Monday to see Idina Laurens again. That Wednesday, he was sitting on the university steps, eating a somewhat squashed peanut butter sandwich, when a voice jerked him out of his lunchtime reverie.

"Mark!" the voice called out, "Hey, Mark!"

He looked up sharply. The figure striding toward him on short, blue-jean-clad legs was wearing that velvet jacket and had her russet hair pulled into two loose plaits.

"You mind if I sit with you?" Idina Laurens asked, reaching him. Mark shook his head hurriedly.

"No. No, not at all." His face felt abnormally hot. Again.

She sat down next to him, drawing her knees up to her chin and encircling them with her arms. It was the sort of mannerism that Mark, as a budding film director, would have suggested to make a character appear childlike, more vulnerable.

"So," she began lightly, "you miss home yet?"

Mark shook his head. "Part of the appeal of NYU for me was that it's so far away from home," he gave an odd little half-laugh, "You? I mean, do you miss it? Your home, I mean, obviously, not mine."

He could see the corners of her lips pulling up in an amused smile. "Oh, my home is only a subway ride away," she told him, "I'm from Brooklyn."

"How'd you know _I _wasn't a New Yorker?" Mark wanted to know.

"Because, no offense, but every time I see you, you look completely overwhelmed."

Now he felt a little humiliated. Great. This girl thought he was some naive country-bumpkin or something like that. And how presumptuous of her, anyway, to just _assume _she could know things about him just by looking.

Idina had been watching him closely. "Oh, look, I'm sorry," she backtracked, "I just made myself sound like such a snobby know-all. I just... I always try to second-guess people. It's kind of a habit. I'm usually wrong, anyway."

To this day, he doesn't know why he said it; "Well, I'm going to guess something about you; I'm going to guess that you don't want to join me at the Life Cafe later? I'm meeting some friends there."

For several moments, she just looked at him. _She's going to say no, _Mark found himself thinking, _and I'm going to look a total fool._

"You guessed wrong."

"What?"

"I'd love to. There's just one problem..."

Mark's few soaring seconds of triumph took a sudden nose-dive. Here it was... "What's that?"

"I have no idea where it is."

At this, he laughed. It was a nervous laugh, a mixture of relief and awkwardness, with only a dash of genuine humour. "You call yourself a New Yorker," he said, "well. That's not a problem. I can easily give you directions."

**A/N: The character of Idina is in no way based on Idina Menzel. I just couldn't think of a name for her, and since it was the song "My Own Worst Enemy" that inspired her, it sort of fit.**

**Anyway, how's that for a first chapter? The little review button loves you! :D**


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